6 Websites for Finding Color Mix Inspiration

There are a lot of great websites out there for finding color inspiration, and each has a specific niche. Taken together, this list should fulfill all your searching needs, whether that means getting your imagination recharged by a variety of images, finding great stock or free photos, or making the perfect set of color palettes.

1.Designspiration

This site is especially useful if you’re looking for design inspiration from a big variety of artistic sources; it has categories for architecture, fashion, packaging, and much more.

Although it provides a comprehensive search tool for all kinds of design images, it’s easily customized to work for searches by color alone. All you need to do is choose up to five colors from their full-page palette, and the site will present you with images that contain the same color combination. You can further finesse your results by adding in a category or search term, and then save the images you like.

2.Colrd

This site has just as large of a variety of image categories, but on a very different slant; instead of looking through different types of design, you can view, alter, and appropriate palettes, gradients, patterns and images.

Once you choose a category, you can select a palette or image and view in further depth. From here, you can edit the palette in great detail with a set of sliders, and save your composition to a collection. Or you can view the CSS code snippet to easily drop it into a working design.

3.TinEye

Try using this database if you’re specifically looking for creative commons photography.

At first glance, TinEye seems to basically be an easier way to sift through Flickr’s free imagery. But it’s a lot more sophisticated than that: you can specify the colors and their ratios within photos to get results with exactly the right combinations. This sensitivity makes it the best resource for finding images with very specific color combinations. You can revise these parameters quickly and easily, and identify the hex numbers of all your colors for further use.

4.Shutterstock Spectrum

If you’re planning on using stock photography for your next project, this is the perfect resource for finding exactly the right imagery.

Certainly the easiest way to find stock images, the display on this site is especially appealing, because the images are so large and the interface is both minimal and intuitive. You can combine color searches (via a small slider) with keyword specifications to find the right hues on the right subject matter. You can even filter your search for brighter or darker tones within the same hue.

5.Color Explorer

If you’re looking for inspirational color palettes rather than great imagery, head to this site of comprehensive color resources.

Color Explorer lets you browse through its library of palettes, or you can create your own, either from scratch or from extracting colors from images. (This makes it a great tool for using in synergy with one of the more image-based resources mentioned above.) You can also select colors from its database of all the major color libraries, such as Websafe Colors and Named Web Colors. But its best offering is the Color Matching tool, which is a wonderfully easy way to create multiple related palettes based on different color systems; you can switch between complementary, triadic, and other methods of color theory to find beautiful variations on any color theme.

6.Kuler

For a color palette explorer that is already integrated with your Adobe Creative Suite, use this site. After searching through palettes by name, subject, or hex number, you can save palettes to your account, and easily access them through all of your Adobe programs. Kuler also offers the ability to extract hues from uploaded images, and editing on-site.

What’s great about these sites is that they all have different functions and specialties that can be used independently for a quick search, or together for a powerful synergy of effects. With this list, you’re sure to have the right source for any kind of color inspiration needed on your future work.

This is a guest post contributed by Rob Toledo, who is working alongside Shutterstock and Bigstock stock creating guides to using stock footage and stock photography to increase user engagement and lower bounce rates. He can be reached on Twitter @stentontoledo.